Teens and Emotions: A Time to Talk
Filed under {!-- ra:0000000075b2078e0000000016271230 --}{if 'Teens and Emotions: A Time to Talk' == '52home' && category_name == '52home'} Biblical Womanhood | Emotions | Motherhood {if:else} Biblical Womanhood | Emotions | Motherhood {/if}If one word captures the priority for our children’s emotions in the teen years, it is “conversation.” We find this command in Scripture:
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. ~Deuteronomy 6:7
Teaching self-control is not an end in itself. We are fashioning vessels that can receive and retain the gospel truths we pour into their hearts.
Sometimes, parents get it backwards. They talk to their toddler as if he was an adult—explaining, bribing, reasoning, pleading—but fail to provide the emotional training a small child needs most: discipline and self-control.
On the flip side, parents often fail to have fruitful conversations with their teenagers: “Because I said so, that’s why!” They can fail to explain what God’s Word says about emotions at just the age when their children need to hear it most.
These priorities are not mutually exclusive. A teenager certainly needs discipline and self-control, and we should teach our toddlers using simple language they can understand.
But hopefully, when a child reaches the age where they are beginning to contemplate the world around them and trying to understand the “why” behind the “what,” we as parents have provided a strong foundation of self-control. And hopefully we are right there, ready and eager to teach them what God’s Word says about their feelings.
The tween and teenage years are a time to talk, a time to listen, and a time to teach. How do we get this conversation started? And what do we teach? More on those questions, to come.
Related Posts:
Reassuring Words for Changing Emotions
Navigating the Emotional Changes of the Teen Years
Teens and Their Emotions: Easily Influenced, Highly Influential